


all the different ways that we collide

by watfordbird33



Series: that was the future; this is the past [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, M/M, Playing EXTREMELY fast and loose with canon, What is this thing previously called canon and now called MINE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 01:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10561436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: There’s a moment every time his freighter struggles back to consciousness when the lights start blinking faster, and a whir buzzes from underneath the pilot’s seat. Like a heartbeat. Then all the code starts readjusting itself on the dashboard and the lights come on for real.“I’m the pilot.”And then just this sheer wonderment, this disbelief. Staring wide-eyed at the man on the other side of the bars.“I’m the pilot.”He feels it, inside himself. He knows. (He’s the freighter.) He’s the pilot. He’s Bodhi Rook.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for language. And for the ending of Rogue One, although heavily dramatized. (Again: what is canon?) And for Bor-Gullet because ugh, ugh, and ugh again.

{error}

{error}

{error}

 

I’m the pilot.

 

{error}

{error}

{err

 

Coming back to himself is like that feeling when his freighter boots back up after maintenance and all the lights take three or four or five minutes to turn back on. Kind of flickery and blurred. Systems not quite aligned.

“Are you the pilot?”

He wants to say what’s in his head, which is a giant mix-up of things, lights and buttons flashing back to life: _error. error._ And _fuck you,_ randomly, absurdly, even though he doesn’t swear because his mother used to--

_his mother._

He has a mother, and when he swore she’d flick him on the wrist. She’d laugh at him when he scowled. She’d tell him the swear-fairies were biting him for being so common.

{error}

“Hey. Hey. Are you the pilot?”

The pilot.

I’m the pilot.

{error} {error} {error}

There’s a moment every time his freighter struggles back to consciousness when the lights start blinking faster, and a whir buzzes from underneath the pilot’s seat. Like a heartbeat. Then all the code starts readjusting itself on the dashboard and the lights come on for real.

“I’m the pilot.”

And then just this sheer wonderment, this disbelief. Staring wide-eyed at the man on the other side of the bars.

_“I’m the pilot.”_

He feels it, inside himself. He knows. (He’s the freighter.) He’s the pilot. He’s Bodhi Rook.

 

Sometimes his freighter doesn’t get started up quite right, and so even after the lights all come on and the engine whirs to life, the whole ship shudders a bit--rocks on the landing pad, puffs steam, beeps error messages with no foundation. The previous pilot left a list of quirks to attend to, but sometimes the freighter goes beyond those mapped idiosyncrasies.

That’s how Bodhi feels, right now. He sits between a blind man and a tight-lipped girl in a Rebel fighter and waits for his start-up to subside. Rocking on the landing pad. Puffing steam. Beeping error messages with no foundation.

He can’t remember everything, but he thinks he remembers enough. The monster. And how it tore his mind apart.

 

_Bor-Gullet._

He keeps quiet when Jyn cries, silently, for Saw Gerrera. Tells himself everyone has a right to love who they will love.

Then he can't take it anymore, and he goes downstairs. He watched the stars go by in hyperspace and thinks about the way his freighter would kind of hiss and spit and shake around, _Ornery Girl, come on, come on, one more trip,_ and then he _misses_ it. Misses that stupid persnickety old thing, that secondhand bundle of junk.

“You all right?”

It's Cassian. The dark-eyed man on the other side of the bars. He has this way of walking, of breathing, that scares Bodhi to death: one moment he's alone. The next, Cassian’s there.

“Yes,” Bodhi says, “yes. I just--”

He stops there and takes a breath because it was a yes or no question, as simple as that. His mother

{error} {error} {error}

was always on his case about what she called _leaky words._ Bodhi named his first freighter after her--a right pile of junk, _Leaky Words_ was, and not even half the size of _Ornery Girl._

“Was it Bor-Gullet?”

“Yes.”

Cassian’s forehead is furrowed. “You were supposed to lose your mind.”

Bodhi shrugs. “Things didn't go as planned, I guess.”

He looks at Cassian and tracks his dark eyes, crooked nose, scratchy mustache. And thinks, _This is the man who saved me._ Because _things didn't go as planned_ is just a rougher way of saying, _I would have lost if it wasn't for you._

I'm the pilot. I'm the pilot. And I would have lost my mind.

 

On Eadu, Bodhi finds himself watching Cassian and how he moves. The curve of his back. The way the water pastes his trousers to his legs.

Clambering from rock to rock back down the Eadu mountainside--Cassian’s blaster leveled at a man Bodhi hardly knows--Bodhi wonders if the silhouette Cassian made against the rain has anything to do with the ignorance Bodhi’s presenting to what the man’s about to do.

Then he gets rid of that thought and hurries even quicker down the rocky ridge. He says _fuck_ twice, his feet slick, and the swear-fairies nip him appropriately.

(Later, Jyn confronts Cassian in the cabin of the Rebel fighter, and Bodhi can't help but breathe relief. He didn’t leave Cassian to kill Galen Erso. He just left him to confront his own conscience, and lose.)

 

“You flew cargo with the Empire, right?”

“Right.”

“Good ship?”

“Bit of a junk heap.”

“Do you have a holo of her?”

“No, but she was beautiful.”

Then there's this long, long silence, and it looks like Cassian’s struggling to say something. Or maybe not say something.

“Spit it out,” Bodhi says, and hates himself for his audacity.

“It's nothing,” Cassian says. “It doesn't matter.”

 

{error}

{error}

 

The fear on Scarif’s so intense that it's like a black hole’s collapsed in Bodhi’s chest. Fragmented. He collects pieces of his heart as he crouches by the coms system in the stolen Imperial freighter. _Rogue One,_ he thinks, and she’s sleeker than _Ornery Girl._ She’s this gorgeous mass of high-tech Imperial design.

Oh, and Bodhi knows what Cassian was trying to say. He knows it because he feels it, too, barely a day in and already falling. _You’re beautiful, too._ Or, _Your eyes are beautiful, too._ Leaky words but for the first time Bodhi kept them inside. And he wishes he hadn’t. He wishes he’d gotten past the error messages and just blurted the whole deal out.

You saved my life. You saved my mind.

They’re going to die, here. Ionized atoms in space. And K2’s assured smirking tone: _I can survive in space._

Bodhi reaches for the com.

“Cassian? Cassian, come in.”

“Bodhi?”

“Cassian--I--”

He screws the heels of his hands into his eyes, pressing the tears right out of his system until they’re flushed like drainage from a freighter. That was another one of _Ornery Girl’s_ little things; she’d spit sewage waste at random intervals, no matter if she was connected to the tube they usually siphoned with. Bodhi and his copilot would just laugh their fucking _heads_ off at it, imagining piles of shit exploding in Imperial backyards.

{error}

{error}

No.

He won’t allow himself to think of Reg.

“Cassian.”

“Bodhi.”

“I--”

“It’ll be all right. Just stay on the com. Just keep talking to me.”

(Reg.)

(He looked just like Cassian. And his voice, too. That lilt.)

Bodhi’s crying, but it’s silent. He stares at the com in his hand and it’s certain, now, that they’re all going to die. Tumbling in outer space. Sewage from _Ornery Girl_ spinning through the sky.

He can’t believe Bor-Gullet rid him of Reg.

“Cassian,” he says, and it’s a flood, a torrent. He couldn’t stop it even if it wanted to. “Your eyes. They’re fucking beautiful. They’re just like Reg’s.”

 

_“Imagine their surprise,” Reg wheezes, “when a ton of shit just plummets through the atmosphere and lands right in their front yard.”_

_Bodhi’s laughing so hard he’s crying. Weaving: unable to stay upright. Reg catches him around the waist with an arm and pulls him forward._

_“And just like, canister after canister of piss.”_

_They kiss somewhere in the middle, and it tastes like laughter. It tastes like all of Bodhi’s error messages blinking out. It tastes like a smile on each of their lips._

 

{error}

{error}

 

I’m the pilot.

 

{error}

{error}

{err}

 

“Bodhi? _Bodhi, come through!”_

 

{error}

{error}

 

_“Put your goggles down, Bodhi. What use are they doing up there on your forehead?”_

 

And Reg’s laughing. Just doubled over. Unintelligible words and sobs. Bodhi can see him, right there, kind of shrouded in mist but still tall and upright, scruffy mustache, dark eyes. Pronouncing _Bodhi_ like _Boo-dee._

“Fuck it no no no no no no no Bodhi fucking come back don’t leave me I meant to say you’re beautiful too oh God Bodhi come on come back don’t die don’t do this I wanted more I wanted you--”

But it’s okay, Bodhi wants to say, looking at Reg, hearing Cassian, about to close his eyes. You’ll get the plans through. You’ll save the Rebellion.

And Reg’s right there.

Reg, I missed you.

I missed you so much.

 

{error}

{error}

 

Cassian. Give ‘em hell.

 

{error}

{er

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't ship Bodhi/Cassian until I wrote this. But now I ship it. A lot. And like, someone please just give Bodhi a hug that lasts for the rest of time because he's so beautiful and sweet and fragile and ah.


End file.
